Eurolanche

Lockout did not stop Eurolanche

Nothing was looking good in September last year. It was not clear when or even if the NHL season would start. They canceled the training camps, pre-season games, first regular season games… At first, there was a big uncertainty about what was going to happen with Eurolanche. It was the first lockout for the fan club and some fans had started to spread negative predictions. There are not many fan sites that would survive the lockout, some fans said. Their predictions were based on logic – what were we supposed to do without NHL games? Yes, some fan sites published maybe two or three stories during that period without hockey, but Eurolanche has not stopped working. We worked harder than anytime before. It is every year´s cliché, but the final results of our work just confirm that the last season was the most successful in Eurolanche history.

Exclusive interviews

There were two key parts of the previous season – the lockout and after the lockout. The lockout started suddenly. We can use the word suddenly also regarding the exclusive interviews. The idea of our own interviews did appear in September. It was just a spontaneous idea and we did not know what we should expect. Before that, we did interviews only during the Eurolanche Invasions in Denver or only with Jan Hejda who has been always willing to answer our questions. We wanted more. We wanted to start interviews with more current/former players and the Colorado Avalanche employees. Thanks to our popularity we finally did most of the interviews that we wanted. We did 27 interviews from September to June.

It is hard to choose the best interview or the interview that we honor most. We are proud for the interviews with the current Avalanche players like Matt Duchene, Paul Stastny and Gabriel Landeskog – we interviewed them during their lockout careers in Europe. In the same time we did interviews with Ryan O´Reilly and Semyon Varlamov, but we met them in person in Czech Republic and Slovakia. Big thank goes to David Jones, young prospects and future starts of the Lake Erie Monsters and to other players like Marek Svatos, Ville Nieminen, Per Ledin, Chris Stewart, Sandis Ozolinsh and more. The list is long and includes also several interviews with Jan Hejda who answered our questions regularly during the season. I believe we will do the same with Jan in the upcoming season as well.

Finally, I cannot forget the interview with Seth Jones. We interviewed him just few hours before the draft lottery. As you know our Colorado Avalanche won it and Jones was projected as number 1 at that time. Perfect timing for the interview, wasn't it? The interview appeared on the Denver Post website. Actually, many North American and European websites sourced and quoted us during the last season. All interviews are available in English language at this link. And our media appearances are available here.

More about the lockout

The lockout was not only about interviews, but also about hundreds of our own stories. Mainly, we published at least three stories in Czech/Slovak language daily, but we also tried to expand our English and International daily coverage. We focused on the Avalanche players in Europe and brought daily updated recaps of their games. We were the sole website that provided the recaps of Avs players in one place. The next positive aspect was personal contact with players in Switzerland (Greg Mauldin), Czech Republic (Stewart, Varlamov) and Slovakia (O´Reilly, Varlamov, Svatos…). For me, the unforgettable moment was definitely a three-day trip in the Czech Republic for the meetings with Landeskog, Stewart and Varlamov.

The lockout brought the Avalanche players to “our homes”. Eurolanche had never published more of our own exclusive interviews and stories before. It was kind of a paradox that the number of daily visits to our websites went up during the lockout when the NHL did not play. We were joking that the players came to visits us like we did during the trips to Denver. In that time, I had no idea we would organize the next trip called the Eurolanche Invasion V in the shortened season.

Eurolanche Invasion V

We organized all our first four Invasions with enough time for the preparation and the organization. Due to the lockout, we set a deadline for the Invasion V for the end of 2012. At the start of January, there was still a lockout and I believed there would not be any trip that season. In spite of that there were Rudo, Matej and Lukas, the Eurolanche members, who believed we could do it with only a few weeks to organize the trip. We set the plan, organized the schedule and finally bought our tickets. Eurolanche V started in March.

It was the fifth Invasion since 2008. It was hard to reach bigger achievements and experience bigger events and memories. We did it. We visited the most Avalanche games in our history in one trip – seven. We drove 12-14 hours to Minnesota for our very first away game in history. We were interviewed two times during the intermissions at Pepsi Center and the interviews appeared on the jumbotron. We watched one Avs game from the VIP lounge, met with all the players and made several exciting trips… It was a busy schedule and I bet I forgot to mention something. Invasion V was a big chapter of the last season and you can read about it more in this final recap. The recap also appeared as a two-page story in the biggest European magazine about the NHL, Pro Hockey.

Season 2012/13

The lockout and the Eurolanche Invasion V were the main storylines of the last season, but I cannot forget the other works done by the Eurolanche staff members. We published previews and summaries of all Avalanche games, columns and comments, analysis and more stories than before in the English language. We had a special coverage dedicated to Joe Sakic on the occasion of his induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame and other special coverage of the trade deadline and the 2013 draft.

Except the news coverages and publishing of hundreds of stories we did not forget the typical fan club's works. We organized the third edition of the Eurolanche League – the betting league. The biggest number of members took part in it to date. We raised our activity on our Facebook and Twitter accounts and organized several contests for souvenirs or signed photos. In August 2012 (I count it in the last season) we met with Jan Hejda, Milan Hejduk and David Koci. Especially, the meeting with Hejda and Hejduk at the same time and place was unforgettable and I doubt we can make it again in the future. Finally, all long-time active staff members received souvenirs and signed photos from Eurolanche at the end of the season. It could motivate other fans who would like to help us in the future.

It was a big and perfect year. I will never forget it. A big thank you to all who helped Eurolanche. Thank you!